Nick Bollinger finds John Prine in good humour - even as he confronts his mortality - on his first album in a dozen years.
John Prine Photo: supplied
‘Knocking On Your Screen Door’ is the song that opens The Tree Of Forgiveness, John Prine’s first album of new songs in a dozen years, and in a sense there’s nothing new in it; the same three chords Prine’s been using since his debut album almost half-a-century ago, and another woebegone tale from one of life’s also-ran’s. Only if it was that simple then there would be a whole lot more John Prines out there. In fact, he’s unique, and The Tree Of Forgiveness reminds me just why.
The Tree Of Forgiveness Photo: supplied
You could pick almost any verse of any one of these songs as an example, but that one (which is called ‘Summer’s End’) will do. There was a time when Prine used to introduce his characters by name: Donald and Lydia, Billy The Bum. These days he doesn’t usually bother, but that’s okay; the little details make you feel you know them within the first few lines anyway.
In ‘Summer’s End’ he drops you somewhere in the middle of the story. There’s a couple, and some kind of estrangement. Who knows how long it’s been, but it’s those sentimental occasions – Valentine’s Day, Easter, New Year’s Eve – that bring the feelings to the surface. It’s a sad story, but Prine’s still going to have some fun with it. He loves rhyme. ‘Valentines break hearts and minds’ – he must have been pleased with that one – and the ‘Easter egg ain’t got a leg’ - well it’s silly but should get a laugh. And then he follows it with a chorus that will squeeze out a tear as well. It’s masterful yet feels effortless, and he does it here again and again.
Prine is 71 now and has survived two bouts of cancer in the past twenty years. It’s taken its toll on his voice, which was never exactly pretty, but has hardly dimmed his outlook. There may be a few more black jokes and references to old folks’ homes, but life as he portrays it is still wondrous and absurd. And he’d rather trust his own folk wisdom – or the instinct of dogs – than anything the scientists have to say, as he makes clear in ‘The Lonesome Friends Of Science’.
Curiously, most of these songs were co-written, though it’s hard to tell what Prine’s collaborators brought to the party, as the voice is always so intrinsically Prine. Several are co-credited to the great if little-known Pat McLaughlin (whose own albums are well worth a listen.)
Most curious though, might ‘God Only Knows’. The song, Prine says, had its origins back in the 70s, and started as a co-write with the record producer Phil Spector, who is currently serving life imprisonment for the 2003 murder of Lana Clarkson. And in the light of that, the lyric – a solemn meditation on destiny – feels a little spooky to me.
On the other hand, Prine is in classic black comic form as he contemplates his own demise in the album’s final song ‘When I Get To Heaven, where he pictures himself in an uproarious afterlife, where the only people he has any unkind words for are, funnily enough, critics. ‘Paralytic syphillitics’ he unfairly calls them. Great rhyme, though.
